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Whispercutter
The Whispercutter was a type of light transport aircraft once used solely by the Raven Guard Legion during the latter days of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy in the late 30th and early 31st Millennia. Constructed on Kiavahr, the Whispercutter is an open-topped air-frame flyer that uses gravitic impellers for propulsion and was capable of dropping up to ten Astartes into a war zone in utter silence and with practically no chance of detection. History By the time the Primarch Corvus Corax took command of his Space Marine Legion, the Great Crusade was over a standard century old. Corax was quick to impose the style of war he had perfected in the dungeons of Lycaeus over that which had come to define the XIX Legion, melding stealth and guile with vigilance and swiftness. During the restructuring of the Legion, they commissioned several innovations from the forges of Mars, all of them cunningly wrought to further its mastery in the arts of stealth and speed. It was during this time that the Whispercutter, along with other craft such as the Shadowhawk variant of the Thunderhawk, were first deployed by the XIX Legion. Such technology was created not by the Martian Mechanicum nor any of their Forge Worlds, but by those master artificers of Kiavahr who formerly served that world's Tech Guilds. Utilising strands of machine canon unknown to the mainstream of the Mechanicum, the Kiavahran guild artificers created all manner of systems at the behest of the Raven Guard, and in time the Legion's Techmarines were inducted into these mysteries. It has been speculated that the Kiavahrans might have been declared outcast by the jealous lords of Mars, were it not for the patronage of so august a body as the Legiones Astartes and the Primarch Corax. Notable Campaigns *'The Day of Vengeance (ca. 008.M31)' - The Raven Guard Legion infiltrated the prison-world on Carandiru with Whispercutters that brought elite infiltration squads of Mor Deythan covertly into the planet's capital. The Raven Guard Astartes seized the local plasma generators and overloaded the city's power grid, disabling its anti-air defences and shrouding the city in darkness. This campaign became known as one of Corax's closest brushes with defeat, following the creation by the Traitor Legions of a type of Astartes sometimes referred to as "New Men" or Legiones Superior in the ancient records. Equipped with experimental technologies of unknown and esoteric designs, these monstrosities, who were created by the Emperor's Children Apothecary Fabius Bile, successfully overcame Lord Corax himself, who was their captive until a taskforce of Raven Guard Astartes under former Commander Gherith Arendi disobeyed the Primarch's orders and arrived in the nick of time to save his life. Role The Whispercutter was used by the Raven Guard Legion to deploy its elite infiltration troops, such as the Dark Fury Assault Squads and the Mor Deythan. The Dark Fury squads leapt from great heights to descend upon the silenced retro thrusters of their Jump Packs directly onto the heads of their unsuspecting targets. Due to the open-topped nature of the Whispercutter, it was unable to drop from orbit like other assault craft, and so the vehicle was delivered to a planet's surface via other means. Adeptus Mechanicus Technical Specifications See Also *Darkwing Pattern Storm Eagle Gunship *Shadowhawk Gunship Sources *''The Horus Heresy: Book Three - Extermination'' (Forge World Series), pp. 134, 277 *''Ravenlord'' (Novella) by Gav Thorpe Category:W Category:Imperial Vehicles Category:Imperium Category:Raven Guard Category:Space Marines Category:Vehicles